The Impact of China's One-Child Policy

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The Chinese population has been growing since the beginning of Chinese civilization, but never as rapidly as when the People’s Republic of China was formed. Mao Zedong believed that expanding the population would lead to a spur in economic growth. The People’s Republic of China provided improved sanitation and medicine, which helped facilitate the growth of the Chinese population. The encouragement of population growth was soon ended after both the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution because China was unable to support such a large expansion of the population. The One-Child Policy was enacted in 1979, and although it helped level off the population, it has had many negative effects on the Chinese economy as well as Chinese society.

After the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution China was able to reevaluate their current policies in order to better suit their current economy and population. The growth rate in China had grown exponentially, which caused numerous problems socially and economically. When Mao Zedong was in power he believed that a large growth in population would spur economic growth. With this idea in mind he started to industrialize China without taking into consideration how this massive growth in people would affect the food supply, and natural resources. As China’s population grew the food supply became depleted. Mao Zedong was very focused on industrializing China and he did not think about the repercussions of neglecting the agricultural segment of the country.

When Mao Zedong took power in China he created the People’s Republic of China. The People’s Republic is a one-party socialist state controlled by the Communist Party. With power from the Communist Party Mao ...

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